Serious Skills: Streetwise

Surprisingly enough, the Rules Compendium actually lists a mechanical use of Streetwise. It runs kinda like this:

When in a settlement, use Streetwise to learn the recent news and gossip, find the best deals, avoid danger, and pick up the names of the local movers and shakers. This knowledge is gained by interacting with people, not by studying maps or books. This action takes about 1 hour of effort. See the table below for appropriate DCs. If successful, the character gleans a useful bit of information, gathers rumors, finds an available job or unique locale or comes up with the best possible deal on an item. The character is able to do this without attracting any unwanted attention to him or herself. If the check fails, the character may try again but probably draws the attention of some authority or hostile faction doing so.

Streetwise can also be used as a Knowledge check, requiring no actions and no time.

The DC table is then as follows:

Contrary to my normal nitpicking on skill writeups, I have to give props to the writer(s) on the Streetwise skill. The writeup is succinct but useful and in a rare display of narrative forethought for a rules section, there’s a ‘failing forward’ option (attract unwanted attention) included in the description. THIS is how you write a skill description.

There are still a couple sour points for me that I think are worth addressing. First, there’s the 1 hour effort bit. Can one guy (or gal) on foot in a city really accomplish anything useful in terms of information gathering in an hour? That seems awfully quick. On top of that, “1 hour” is really a meaningless time description in 4E – and yes, for the record I feel the same way about the time required for rituals. Why is it useless, you ask? In 4E, time passes in rounds, skill checks, short rests and extended rests. Think about it – when was the last instance where the exact time of day mattered? Sunrise, noon, sunset, evening – these all have meaning occasionally, but unless your DM has some kind of Majora’s Mask thing going on, the difference between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM is practically nothing. You don’t feel the effect of time in an RPG unless something happens. A round is a full combat exchange. A skill check is however long it takes for a particular task to go well or poorly. A short rest is the downtime between scenes that refreshes encounter powers and HP and an extended rest is the time required to refresh ALL your powers, HP, etc. What good does “1 hour” do you in mechanical terms? It’s longer than a short rest, but too quick for an extended rest. It’s enough time for (an)other player(s) to make a skill check but if that’s all it is, why define the “hour?”

As usual I’m sure it seems like I’m harping on some kind of obscure point for the sake of harping on something, but here’s where I’m going with it. Between the 1 hour effort time and the ‘you may try again’ statement, the description seems to encourage repeated use of the skill if the first roll fails. This is not good game practice. No one likes to sit around and roll (or watch someone else roll) a check over and over again until it succeeds. It’s boring and further emphasizes the fact that at the very bottom of most RPGs is the “roll high to win” game – a game that seems silly and pointless if exposed (See also 3.X’s Taking 10 and Taking 20 options). Luke Crane calls this the “Let It Ride” rule in his books; make one check to attempt to accomplish a task and be done with it. Now, If the PCs MUST get the information, then they MUST get the information. Failure can only complicate the gaining of that information. This is why the “attracting unwanted attention” part is so slick. A failed Streetwise check that results in information gained but also interference from a new adversary is WAY more interesting than multiple rerolls and counting off hours for the sake of counting hours. This goes doubly so if nothing else occurs in those hours. If the Streetwise check is about something not pivotal to the plot and it fails, then just let it fail after one roll and move on. Else, if the players REALLY want whatever it is to happen OR the check is necessary for plot progression failure should lead to a complication, not another roll. Combat sequences, information that is slightly inaccurate in some small but meaningful way, or secondary obstacles are all fine ways to penalize a failure but keep things moving. Lost time CAN be a good penalty, but only if that time means that the bad guy gets further away from town or the disease takes tighter hold or something.

My other minor gripe with the skill writeup is in the DC table. As I discussed in the Perception installment, the DCs of a particular task increase not because the characters’ levels go up, but because the task itself gets nastier or more thorny. I won’t reiterate my whole discussion here, but go back and read that entry to refresh your memory if you don’t know what I’m talking about. In my opinion, the DC table here is backwards. It makes far more sense to base the DC off of the inherent availability of the information (requires extensive or obscure knowledge, could expose the wrongdoings of major NPCs, has been lost for hundreds of years) since that scales much better with the PCs’ power and scope and THEN modify the base DC according to the size and familiarity of the settlement. How often will those discrepancies come up in actual play? I’m not really sure, but my gut says ‘rarely’ hence the categorizing of this as a ‘minor’ gripe. Still, why not encourage the best possible mindset for planning and adjudicating skill checks on the fly, ya know?

As to the Streetwise skill itself and the material it covers, I feel this is the second best change to the skill system between 3.X and 4E, losing only to the consolidation of Spot, Search and Listen into Perception. Streetwise is sort of the urban Nature, gathering several useful skills that often suffered from the cumbersome skill point subsystem into a tidy and powerful package – Knowledge (local), Speak Language, Decipher Script, and Gather Information. I would also accept arguments that multiple Professions, Appraise and Escape Artist (as in escaping pursuers not merely shackles) are contained within the Streetwise skill as well. If you’re in a city or town and you need to find something, escape from something or learn about your environment, Streetwise is the way to do it.

Who are the folks trained in Streetwise and why?

Training in Streetwise often assumes a preference for the urban jungle over the natural one. Now that seems pretty obvious, but parse it out and you’ll see it has significant implications for the type of game being played.

A player will not choose Streetwise for his or her character unless (s)he either wants or expects to have to interact on more than a basic “do you have a quest for me?” level with most NPCs. Like training in the Insight skill assumes that some NPCs will lie or otherwise obfuscate the facts of the game reality, training in Streetwise assumes that there is more information to be gained than what the DM immediately hands out. It believes that each settlement has its own sort of ecology and that life goes on pretty much as normal in any given civilized place whether the PCs are there or not. Furthermore, if the PCs can simply walk into the local tavern and talk to either the barkeep or the shady old man in the corner to get their next quest, they’re not going to train Streetwise – they have no need of it. PCs trained in Streetwise are a cue to the DM that there’s an assumption of politicking, greasing palms, making connections and investigating in the campaign. It means that the city is not just a place where you buy your gear and sleep – the city is itself a dungeon.

It should be clear from this description the kind of characters who have Streetwise training – People Who Need People. Maybe you rely on others for your living as a Vendor or Beggar. “Vendor” of course has many possible sub-categories; you could sell anything from food to weapons, dry goods to information and if you’re Selling Information you better darn well be trained in Streetwise! On the other side of the retail chain, being a Supplier is a lot easier when you know your target consumers or sales outlets. You may also be making your living off the general public indirectly. Spies, Law Enforcement and Chroniclers/Scribes all need other people around in order to fulfill their jobs.

On the other hand, maybe you don’t necessarily need other people to survive, but you enjoy the city life anyway. If you Champion A Cause in your spare time, perhaps a religion or a sport, you need people to partake in that cause. Gamblers need people to game with (don’t we all?) and often someone to pay their debts. If you’re a member of some really far-out race like a Shardmind or Warforged, your Streetwise training might be a Fascination with Fleshies. Also, maybe you just like talking up how awesome you are and every Bombastic Braggart needs an audience (and more adventures!). Finally, anyone with a strong Thirst For Power ends up with Streetwise training anyway since in order to attain authority you need to know who the current holders are and how to deal with them, be it dealing, ousting, killing, etc.

Streetwise as Sense / Streetwise as Social Skill